Bureaucracy and “Business as Usual”
The Pentagon’s inertia is legendary. It’s like a machine built to keep moving forward no matter what happens—good, bad, or ugly. In an organization with as much talent and as many resources as ours, “business as usual” should be a mark of excellence. But instead, it’s become a synonym for inefficiency. We see it in bloated projects, like the F-35 program, which went so over budget and over schedule that it’s become a running joke in the defense community.
Defense News reported that the F-35 is “the plane that could bankrupt America” if we’re not careful. And yet all these issues, the project just keeps rolling, sucking up money like an industrial-sized Shop-Vac.
Why I personally would welcome an Elon Musk carve-up.
This commitment to keeping the wheels spinning, come hell or high water, creates an environment where top brass can make epic mistakes with zero accountability. As long as they follow the rules and check the right boxes, they know they’re safe. Hunter S. Thompson said it best:
“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”
In the Pentagon, even getting caught doesn’t seem to matter all that much.
A Culture Shift that’s Sapping Morale
Then there’s the cultural shift. Look, I’m all for progress. But we’ve taken a hard turn in recent years toward what I’ll politely call “over-correction.” We’re so busy worrying about offending people that we’ve lost sight of the fact that the military’s primary purpose is not to be a social experiment but to defend the United States.
There’s a growing sense within the ranks that the real focus is on optics, not operations, and that’s a dangerous distraction. Many in uniform are sure to scratch their heads thinking, “I signed up to fight the enemy, not to worry about pronouns.”
Troop morale is taking a beating from this shift. You can see it in recruiting numbers, which are dropping across every branch of service. According to the Military Times, “morale is at an all-time low” as troops feel undervalued and increasingly overburdened by policies that prioritize appearances over effectiveness. We’re seeing good people walk away from the military, not because they don’t love their country, but because they feel like they’re fighting an uphill battle against a system that no longer respects their purpose or their sacrifice.
The Bottom Line
What’s the solution? It’s simple: accountability, agility, and a return to core values. We need leaders who are held responsible for their actions—who feel the sting of failure just as our troops do. We need a Pentagon that moves at the speed of conflict, not the speed of paperwork. And we need to get back to the basics, focusing on what really matters: training our troops to win wars, not to tiptoe around controversial topics.
The Pentagon is not a corporation. It’s not a social services department. It’s the nerve center of America’s defense, and it needs to operate like one. This means hard decisions, a commitment to real accountability, and a willingness to accept that not everything needs to be changed.
Our military deserves better, and frankly, so do the American people. If we don’t fix the rot at the top, we’re going to keep seeing these same mistakes played out on a global stage, with the same tragic results.
So this SEAL welcomes a Trump Pentagon shaken and then stirred.
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